Cyber Native: Surfing a global perspective
Posted: October 25, 2004
by: Brenda Norrell / Indian Country Today
Part one
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The leaves were not the only things changing when September eased into October.
Like lightning bolts, news stories flashed across Indian country, articles that may never have reached Indian
readers, or many others in America, if it were not for the Internet.
The first of those appeared in The Guardian and described the financial dealings of grandfather Prescott Bush
with the Nazis. England's prominent newspaper documented the fortune gained by the Bush family from trading
with Nazis and included a new lawsuit filed by Holocaust survivors.
In Indian country, Prescott Bush was already in the news because of the entry in the Skull and Bones Society
logbook, which states he dug up the remains of Geronimo.
A delegation from Skull and Bones, including Jonathan Bush, the elder president's brother, attempted to return
a skull to San Carlos Apache leaders in New York in 1987. They refused the skull, that of a child. Although they
were told to keep quiet about the matter, they refused. San Carlos Chairman Ned Anderson and Councilman
Raleigh Thompson spoke out.
On sacred Mount Graham in Arizona, Thompson called for the return of Geronimo's remains, to be buried in
the place where Geronimo had requested, the Triplet Mountains of San Carlos.
Then, Alexandra Robbins, author of ''Secrets of the Tomb'', told Indian Country Today in the fall of 2003 that
the presidential race in 2004 could be the first time that both the Republican and Democratic presidential
candidates, George Bush and John Kerry, were members of Skull and Bones.
Robbins' prediction came true. She also pointed out that far from being a nefarious fraternity at Yale University,
Skull and Bones is a brotherhood of power mongers whose goal is world political and financial control and
domination. The most extraordinary fact, she said, is that members of Skull and Bones controlled the
production of the first atomic bomb.
Then, the second story that rocked readers online in October was the allegation that two U.S. Border Patrol
agents in Eagle Pass, Texas, drowned three women immigrants, including a mother and daughter, in the Rio
Grande. In a separate incident, the two Border Patrol agents are also accused of drowning a man. A survivor,
who was beaten, alleges the two Border agents watched as his brother-in-law took his final gasps of breath in
the river. In the article by La Voz de Aztlan in Los Angeles, the survivor described the Border Patrol agents as
''bald like a skinhead'' and the other wearing glasses.
Finally, the third article in October that might have gone unnoticed if it were not for the Internet, was the
Associated Press story of a New Mexico university purchasing a town for Homeland Security. The town of
Playas, near Silver City, was purchased for ''anti-terrorist'' training with an unnamed South American country.
The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology purchased the former Phelps Dodge Corp. town, nearly a
ghost town, for $5 million. The Department of Defense said it would work with a South American country on joint
anti-terrorist exercises, according to Tech President Daniel Lopez, who said he could not reveal the name of
the country involved.
Indigenous know well a similar school, the long protested School of Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., where Latin
military leaders were trained and responsible for innumerable disappeared and dead indigenous in Central and
South America.
During the past decade, the Internet has also been credited with saving the lives of indigenous in the Americas
who are isolated and vulnerable. Jose Garcia, Tohono O'odham frequently in Zapatista autonomous
communities, credits the Zapatistas' international campaign on the Internet with saving the lives of Mayan
Zapatistas.
''Otherwise, the Mexican government would have obliterated them,'' Garcia said.
When an article about the American Indian Genocide Museum in Houston from Indian Country Today was
posted on indianz.com, readers responded overwhelmingly and wanted more written about the American Indian
Holocaust.
Steve Melendez, Pyramid Lake Paiute and president of the American Indian Genocide Museum in Houston,
said the Internet means global access to information.
''For centuries our tribes never knew what it was to be united. Never before has information united our people
to the extent to which it has today. Today, we can search any archive in any museum or library throughout the
world. We can borrow books online from any library in the world. Today, we can unite our people with facts of
history that seemed to keep repeating themselves over and over again.''
Melendez said when President Bush signed H.R 884 regarding Western Shoshone land in Nevada last July, the
American Indian Genocide Museum was given a national stage to point out that this tactic was used by Andrew
Jackson and resulted in the Cherokee's Trail of Tears.
In 1835 Andrew Jackson's negotiator J.F. Schermerhorn wrote to Secretary of War Lewis Cass and said, ''We
shall make a treaty with those who attend and rely upon it.''
''Bill H.R 884 went against the wishes of six out of nine Western Shoshone Tribal Councils. By way of the
Internet, Indian country was made aware of every move the government made. As a result our Museum was
fortunate to be one of many voices crying out for justice and heard around the world.
''This was possible through the Internet, which was able to link us globally.''
The world has not become larger, not smaller.